Speakers 2017

Keynote

Be the Duct Tape and WD 40 For Your Community or Every Librarian is Fucking Awesome

Maurice Coleman

Get your ULU conference started with a keynote to energize you. Think of it as a not so gentle reminder of your place in the community and how you can take advantage of this conference to make a better library. Learn network without a business card. Learn to be awesome at your branch, in your community and your life!

Bio

Maurice Coleman is the Technical Trainer at a Harford County Public Library in Maryland. For over 20 years he has presented numerous virtual and face to face presentations and workshops around the country on librarianship, technology implementation, presentation and training skills and social media. In addition to his work with libraries across the country, he hosts the longest running library training and presentation podcast T is for Training at http://tisfortraining.wordpress.com and was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2010.

Auditorium Sessions

The Critical Library Manager

Turner Masland

Libraries work to meet the information needs of our communities, a mission that is dependent on teamwork. Library managers are tasked with leading, supporting and developing the teams that serve our communities. Social justice and critical theory are frameworks that are often discussed within library practice, but are only starting to be applied to library management. The more we discuss social justice, the more apparent that it’s inclusion in library management is essential. The intended outcome for the presentation is to foster a robust discussion of how the incorporation of critical theory and social justice frameworks can improve our approaches to management and our service to our communities. The goal of the presentation is for audience members to think critically about their own management practice and consider ways of improving equity and in their own organizations.

Damn the Man – Protecting Library Privacy

T.J Lamanna

Discussing both practical and theoretical ways of protecting both librarians and their patrons in a world of social engineering, hacking, and malicious states. Whether it’s email, browsing history, or your texts we’ll cover what you can do to keep yourself private.

Tactical Urbanism in Your Library

Karen Munro

What do cities and libraries have in common? What about activists and librarians? A lot! This session explores tactical urbanist projects from the micro- to the macro-level–from seed-bombing vacant lots to turning Times Square into a pedestrian plaza. I’ll distill key characteristics of tactical urbanism, and share examples of how they’ve worked in library settings. The examples I share will span a wide range of work areas (technical services, space design, library systems) and will be drawn from academic, public, and other types of libraries. Participants will gain inspiration and a deeper understanding of how, when, and why to try a tactical approach to library projects.

Breakout Sessions

Taking Care of Business in the 21st Century: A New Service Model for Entrepreneurs

Caitlin Rietzen, Caitlin Seifritz & Gillian Robbins

In this session, we will talk about how we launched this service model with little funding, and how other libraries can enact similar programs to benefit their business and nonprofit communities. Our team will outline free online resources used to track data on this program to demonstrate our successful efforts to senior staff and our Board of Directors. We will also discuss how to grow your network via “ethical stalking”, and how to utilize community events as guerrilla marketing efforts.

Hooray for Social Justice!

Margo Gustina & Eli Guinnee

We believe that true social justice is for a functional democracy. As libraries are in the democracy business, social justice is part of our core mission. We’ve heard from library people that while they believe in social justice, they don’t think that they should be public activists nor should the library take an explicit stand on issues of race, sexuality, gender, religion, nation of origin, or class discrimination. They are concerned that the community will perceive the library as a politically partisan entity.

In Hooray for Social Justice! we will dive into the difference between partisanship and speaking for our core values. We will try out actions and practices every library, regardless of geography or size, can implement to build a culture of social justice in the library every day.

Note! This is not a sit and listen program! This is a do and discuss program! You’ve been warned.

The Fall of King Saul – a lesson for tomorrow’s library leaders

Edwin Maxwell

Using examples of the current library management trends, we will explore why autocratic rule is increasingly becoming a method of the past, while a culture of inclusion and cooperative decision-making is making it’s way to the forefront.

Mining insight from the biblical tale of history’s most inept king, this session will challenge traditional wisdom and help reshape our view of leadership in library field. Examining the tragic reign, and eventual fall, of King Saul will teach us valuable leadership lessons in the importance of focusing on communal empowerment, leading without fear, The power of “Why”, and valuing outcomes vs. outputs.

Unpacking Silence: New Anti-Oppression Tools & Social Justice Alt-Scholarship for the Classroom

Dawn Stahura, Stacy Collins, Andrew Clark

This presentation will focus on how two Research and Instruction Librarians at Simmons College, Beatley, Library, brought an Anti-Oppression Guide and Social Justice Zine collection to the faculty’s attention as an aid in course design and as part of course projects/assignments. In order to be responsible cultural producers of information, we need to think critically about the resources we are using in our pedagogy and presenting in our classes.The Unpacking Silence Roadshow introduces two resources for both assessing information assigned in courses as well as actively engaging students in exploring and dismantling institutionalized oppression. Further, not only do these resources have impact within the curriculum and classroom, but also within the library. As students (particularly marginalized students) are empowered in their knowledge cultivation and creation, that knowledge creation has tangible, direct influence on the library’s collections and practices, pushing the library’s equity initiatives forward on students’ terms. Concrete examples include student created zines circulating in our collection, student generated subject headings, and content analysis of their zines

Library services for indigenous societies in Latin America

Edgardo Civallero

Library services for indigenous societies in Latin America have been timidly explored and implemented since the late 90s of the past century. Theory and methodology from a LIS perspective still need to be built and developed regarding these experiences, and they are yet to be thoroughly examined and divulgated; however, their potential importance in the continent’s LIS scenario has been already recognized, especially considering the high number of users they may serve in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Peru or Bolivia.

Although the initial goals of these LIS practices were to provide basic, day-to-day library services to populations suffering a number of scarcities, the early approaches and attempts soon made librarians aware that other objectives were also to be reached, especially after considering the reality of indigenous peoples in Latin America, their many problems, and their complicated life. Librarians realized that library services ―and the information they manage― should be aimed at reducing the huge gap still existing between civil society at large and the aboriginal collectives, as well as at facing the many inequalities and issues the latter have to face and endure. Library services could promote basic literacy and divulgate strategic knowledge (e.g. on health care, economics, management, biology) ― while at the same time divulgating information about indigenous cultures and situation in order to raise awareness within each country and foster social inclusion. Also, libraries’ structures, staff and techniques should be used to recover oral tradition and history, to support endangered languages and cultural heritages, and to promote bilingual education.

The work of Latin American librarians and native communities during the last 20 years has produced a set of valuable experiences regarding all the points mentioned above. Even if most of these experiences are now over, some of them are still in place ― and all of them have something to teach to future generations of LIS professionals, both inside and outside the continent. The author (who has been working on this issue in theory and practice for the last 15 years) collects, systematizes and presents some of them in this paper.

Zombies, ComicCon, and Tattoos: bringing Pop to the Library

Haley Holmes

Getting staff involved and excited about programming seems to get harder by the year. Bringing in new users and people of various ages is a problem we all face. Learn how we are bringing people in through the celebration of pop culture and creating teams that love planning new programs. One branch hosts an annual Halloween Carnival and outdoor haunted walk that brings over 2000 visitors in two hours. A Tardis is housed at another location. Librarians are representing at the local tattoo and ComicCon conventions, showing users of all ages that the Library is about more than the traditional.

Access is Dangerous (and Essential)

Carson Block

Many in urban areas of the US can take access to technology and the Internet for granted (it seems like it’s everywhere) but for much of rural America the Public Library is the only spot for equal and open community access. Carson believes that the technology issues faced in urban and rural areas are more similar than different, and that both can and should share & learn together. In this session Carson will tell tales of what’s he’s learned working with rural librarians on the front lines of community engagement, including several years of training in Texas, and work on a self-directed connectivity toolkit with Internet 2 to help rural and tribal libraries tackle the “last 100 meter” problem.

Urban branch libraries: Fighting burnout with self-care

Marta Honores & Holly Anderton

Join two former central library department managers, turned branch managers, on the quest to find the secret to self-care as librarians working in what many lovingly call the Wild West. In the branches, we operate with less staff, money, and support from facilities and security. Burnout is common among our small teams dealing with back-to-back real-life, often heartbreaking issues with our customers. We are in the profession of helping but often neglect to take care of ourselves, yet we’ve all been on a plane and learned whose oxygen mask needs to go on first. Take the first step in helping yourself more! Join Holly Anderton and Marta Honores as they share the results of their 90-day self-care experiment. Learn about the five different kinds of self-care and choose from a plethora of options. You will walk away with personalized tips that will work for you and your schedule.

Answering ALL the questions or “Why CAN’T I put this DVD on my laptop?”

Jessamyn West

Sometimes patrons want to do stuff that is quasi-legal. What is our responsibility to our patrons, to our communities, and to the truth? Jessamyn West will talk about some of her non-traditional reference interactions online, at her (previous) job, and in her community.